Crowdsourcing platform to track symptoms of the population in the USA

A group of epidemiologists and software developers at Harvard, Boston Children's Hospital got together with other volunteers and developed Covid Near You - a platform that uses crowdsourced data to map the symptoms of the population.

The objective is to help citizens and public health agencies identify current and potential hotspots of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Citizens who voluntarily sign up to participate are asked a series of question to determine their current health status as well as if they’ve travelled recently and some other questions with epidemiological interest. Participants can also indicate whether they have been tested for Covid-19 and what was the result.

The platform does not diagnose people, as people only share their symptoms, but developers hope that “this type of data can provide insights of where COVID-19-like symptoms are happening” and they are sharing their data with the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention and working closely with healthcare officials. They are also partnering with international organizations to help them replicate this project in other countries, like Canada or Italy.

The team at Boston Children’s Hospital was already managing a similar platform called Flu Near You, dedicated to track countrywide flu symptoms. So, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, they got together with more volunteers and, in a week, working nights and weekend, pivoted the project to focus on Covid-19.

More information: https://www.covidnearyou.org/#!/

Adapted from: https://www.covidnearyou.org/#!/who-we-are
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/help-researchers-track-coronavir...